Running AVL-MXE as a ‘LiveISO’ With USB Keys so abundantly plentiful and cheap I strongly recommend only running AVL-MXE as a ‘LiveISO’ from a USB Key. Running LiveISO’s from DVD Media should be considered a deprecated and obsolete method to effectively try a Live Linux Operating System these days. AVL-MXE can be run on USB Media as small as 4Gb and for the ultimate LiveISO experience with persistence (the ability to save changes made while running the Live session) I highly recommend using the ‘MX Live USB Maker’ Utility to create an AVL-MXE LiveISO. If you are not already using MX Linux then there are other options such as ‘Unetbootin’ although it will not create a persistent bootable USB key it will create a key which will enable you to try out and potentially install AVL-MXE. Diehard and experienced Linux command line gurus can also use the well-known ‘dd’ command to manually copy the AVL-MXE ISO file to a USB key. There are a number of other Utilities within Linux and on Windows to create bootable USB Keys but they are beyond the scope of this manual. Once you have created a bootable USB Key you will need to plug it into to a USB port on your computer and use the Computers BIOS or UEFI firmware Utility to select the USB Key at boot time. A common hotkey is the ‘F12’ key to enter a boot device selection screen but every BIOS and UEFI Utility are a bit different so if F12 isn’t the ticket consult your Computer’s documentation or give ‘er a Google! By default AVL-MXE should not require a login password to boot into the Desktop, if the User needs to logout then the Username and Password to log back in is ‘demo’ and for Root access the Password is ‘root’. If you need help while running a LiveISO session then both the MX Linux and AVL-MXE PDF Manual files are right in the Openbox Menu!
The Network Assistant for WiFi Due to the staggering amount of computer hardware supported by the Linux kernel and the huge numbers of various networking chipsets that computers are equipped with it is becoming more and more difficult to guarantee that WiFi will work out of the box when you boot a Linux LiveISO. Some WiFi chipsets require some extra config or loading of specific kernel modules and even 3rd party installed firmware to function properly. To mitigate some of this and assist Users in getting WiFi working the MX-Tools Network Assistant is a valuable tool. Of course I can’t provide hard and fast examples that will work for all hardware situations so this section will discuss the Network Assistant in generalities. If you are running a LiveISO session you will find the Network Assistant in the ‘MX-Tools’ section either from the XFCE4-Panel or in the Whisker Menu, because it requires Root permissions you will need to enter the Password ‘root’ to run it. The Network Assistant’s first Tab will show you which chipsets are found on your computer, depending on what kind of computer you have usually this will be one device for hardwired ethernet and a second WiFi device.. Of primary interest is Tab 2 or the ‘Linux Drivers’ Tab because it will show what drivers for your hardware are on the system, whether these drivers are loaded or not or if the drivers are blacklisted by some special module config files. On the next page is a fairly common Broadcom example.. On this particular computer when I boot a default ISO of AVL-MXE the WiFi does not work because the ‘brcmsmac’ driver is blacklisted by default. In order to fix this I needed to use the ‘Unblock’ button which allowed the brcmsmac driver to load and enabled my WiFi to work. Usually if you don’t have WiFi your Wired ethernet will work so it may take a bit of Google sleuthing from your Wired connection to determine what exact driver is required for your chipset. A handy Terminal command you can use to determine what Networking hardware is on your computer and which drivers are loaded is this: inxi -n
0 commenti:
Post a Comment